American Civil Liberties Union

The Challenge

As the most prominent national voice when it comes to protecting our civil liberties, the ACLU finds itself at the center of legal battles in every state and across a broad spectrum of issues. They needed to find a way to raise awareness and strategically navigate around complex, sensitive policy issues, as well as around varying target audiences in different locations, with different legislative and legal landscapes. 

Our Role

GPS served as the in-house senior communications leader at ACLU (immigration and criminal justice reform), leading message development, media strategy, and executive positioning across complex national policy issues and multi-organization coalitions. We worked on a range of issues, across state, over several years; most recently, we partnered on their campaign with the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. We had two goals: one, to raise awareness on how the death penalty is built upon discriminatory laws and practices; and two, based upon that history of discrimination, to pressure Governor Cooper to commute death sentences in the state.

Our Approach

Our approach across campaigns was to secure both local and national media placements to reaffirm ACLU’s standing as the leading organization defending civil liberties and civil rights, and to use a combination of earned and paid, new and legacy media to reach specific target audiences within states. For North Carolina, we deployed a combination of paid ads and influencer content to target the audience based on location. Once awareness was established, we amplified our call to action for audiences: to sign the ACLU’s petition to commute death row sentences in North Carolina. To amplify awareness with political insiders, we used the influencer content as a Connected TV ad running during Sunday political shows.

Results

• Through the combined efforts of the coalition, Governor Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 inmates, the largest grant of death row clemency in North Carolina’s history
• Ads received over 3M impressions and over 12k click-throughs to the petition
• The awareness campaign reached folks an average of 5 times over the course of two weeks, hitting the frequency goals of the campaign
• Overall, GPS has secured hundreds of national and local placements for the ACLU, created internal and external best practices to apply across campaigns, and served as their Communications Director in 7 different states over multiple campaigns. 
• Received Gold Pollie Award from the American Association of Political Consultants for Best Issue Advocacy/Public Affairs Digital Campaign

Outcome

A campaign that reached its specific target audience; ad language that made legal history accessible; proven use of a combined new and legacy media strategy.